Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There’s a special kind of political insanity required to sit around a conference table in 2026 and solemnly declare that America’s biggest problem is that there just aren’t enough babies. Not affordable housing. Not healthcare. Not wages that haven’t remotely kept up with reality. Not the fact that most people under forty need three jobs and a roommate just to afford the luxury of existing. No, apparently the crisis is that Americans looked around at this dumpster fire and collectively said, “You know what? Maybe not.”

And then you’ve got Donald Trump, RFK Jr., and their whole elk herd of conservative natalists clutching pearls because birth rates are declining. Are you fucking kidding me?

These people act like having children is some patriotic duty while simultaneously opposing nearly every policy that would make raising children remotely survivable. They scream “pro-family” right up until someone asks for paid maternity leave, affordable childcare, school lunches, healthcare, housing assistance, or functioning public schools. Suddenly the conversation turns into a TED Talk about bootstraps and personal responsibility.

The modern Republican position seems to be: “Please produce more babies for America… but once they’re born, they’re on their own. Good luck, tiny citizen.”

That’s the part they always skip. They’re passionately pro-fetus. After that? Congratulations, kid, welcome to the capitalist Thunderdome.

They want more births while gutting the very systems that help children succeed. Cut the Department of Education. Slash social programs. Oppose childcare subsidies. Fight healthcare expansion. Attack public schools. Because apparently the goal isn’t to create educated, healthy, successful citizens. The goal is just to manufacture bodies. Bodies for low-wage labor. Bodies for the military. Bodies to keep the economic meat grinder lubricated.

“More babies!” they cry, while making sure those babies grow up in overcrowded classrooms with underpaid teachers and medical debt before they can legally drink.

And RFK Jr. somehow manages to make the whole thing even more absurd. The anti-vaccine crusader lecturing America about children is like hiring a pyromaniac as fire marshal. The man talks about public health like he learned epidemiology from a Facebook comment section in 2011.

At this rate, we’re apparently supposed to return to the 1800s model of parenting:
Have eight kids because statistically maybe four survive measles, polio, whooping cough, or whatever Victorian nightmare disease makes its comeback tour because science became “woke.”

Fantastic plan.

And let’s talk about the sheer delusion of demanding population growth on an already overstrained planet. Housing shortages. Water shortages. Climate disasters. Infrastructure crumbling. Healthcare collapsing under its own weight. Millions already struggling to survive. But sure, the answer is apparently mandatory optimism and infinite reproduction.

It’s especially rich coming from politicians who spent decades making family life economically impossible. Younger generations aren’t refusing to have kids because they hate children. They’re refusing because they did the math. You can’t raise a family on patriotic slogans and conspiracy podcasts. Daycare costs more than rent in some places. College tuition looks like organized crime. Healthcare is basically a subscription service where the monthly prize is not dying.

And after all of that, these same politicians stand there confused, wondering why birth rates are dropping.

Really? You built a society where people can barely afford groceries and then acted shocked when they decided maybe adding a dependent human being into the equation wasn’t financially responsible.

What these people actually want is the nostalgia of a 1950s America that never really existed for most people: women at home, cheap labor plentiful, unquestioned authority, and endless population growth feeding the machine forever. They romanticize giant families while ignoring the fact that back then one income could actually support one.

Now both parents work full time, and even then people are drowning.

But instead of fixing any of that, the solution from Trump, RFK Jr., and company is apparently:
“Have more babies. Also we’re cutting the programs that help babies. Also vaccines are suspicious. Also public education is bad. Also no paid leave. Also no childcare assistance. Also wages are your problem.”

That’s not a family policy. That’s a hostage situation.